Your brand is not your resume or your bio or any online profile. It’s the essence of who you are. And it must be authentic to you.

You know how important Search Engine Optimization is for when you want to find something online.

The keywords you type into Google help you find what you’re looking for, right?

The same is true with your brand — when you want someone to find you, you want to make sure you’re easy to find.

Your personal brand is how you stand out from others in your career field.

The definition of “Branding” is “to make an indelible mark or impression on somebody or something.”

It’s a valuable strategy because you are positioning yourself to be successful in your job search and career.

However you describe it, the good news is: You already have a brand — even if you don’t know what it is. You may have already positioned yourself — you may just not have articulated it yet.

Maybe you’re known as the PR person who can turn a crisis into a non-issue.

Or the graphic designer who specializes in creating attention-getting, award-winning logos.

That’s personal branding for jobseekers.

It’s what you’re known for. It’s not just your job title, although that can be part of it.

To have a strong brand, you must be clear about who you are and who you are not.

A successful career brand is authentic. It reflects your unique attributes or qualities.

To cultivate the brand that will help you reach your goals, you must understand and be able to communicate what makes you exceptional and compelling.

The most difficult part of crafting your online profile is sounding original.

Be specific about what distinguishes you from other people with your same job role.

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Do you need help identifying and capitalizing on your career brand?

As a Certified Personal Brand Strategist (CPBS), let me help identify your unique value proposition, develop that personal branding statement and communicate it throughout your resume and online career profiles (e.g. LinkedIn). Tired of the same old, same old? If you’re ready for optimal and predictable career success, contact me.

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How to Identify (and/or Shape) Your Personal Brand

Who are you?

What makes you different?

How can you figure out what your brand is?

The process of defining your career brand is with self-assessment.

Let’s start with a brainstorming exercise.

Make a list of words and phrases — things you’ve worked with.

Things you’ve accomplished.

Specific training you have.

What projects have you worked on?

Life experience that you’ve had that would be valuable.

Write down whatever comes to mind.

Consider these factors:

Where you grew up

Where you went to school

Places you’ve lived

Special talents/unusual skills

Past misfortunes/things you’ve overcome

Languages you speak fluently

Special training

Past careers

Unique life experiences

Also, leverage the things that you enjoy and do well.

Focusing on these areas enables you to get the most out of your career while differentiating you from others with the same job description.

Look at your performance reviews.

What do other people say about you?

In your handouts, I gave you a list of questions to answer that can help you. You’re not going to be able to answer them now, but I encourage you to take the time to go through them later.

Identify your unique identity.

What do you want to be known for?

You need to express: “I am this.” Take some time to think through this.

It usually takes me a couple of hours to distill my client’s essence. Give it time.

Also, if your personal branding statement could be said about almost anyone with your same job title, it needs work.

The second piece of the puzzle is that it’s not enough to decide only what you want to be known for.

Your brand must also align with something that prospective employers value.

So the next question is: What do they want?

What problem is the company trying to solve?

Solving the problem can be about saving time or building customer relationships.

Position yourself to solve a problem.

The question you want to answer for the employer is, “Why should you hire me?”

When employers are hiring, they really want to know: “Why should I choose you instead of someone else?”

Your brand is an important part of answering this question.

Employers hire for their reasons, not yours.

There are 12 things employers generally hire employees to do.

A colleague, Susan Whitcomb, identified these 12 “Employer Buying Motivators” in her book, Résumé Magic. These are 12 specific needs a company has. These include a company’s need to:

Make money

Save money

Save time

Make work easier

Solve a specific problem

Be more competitive

Build a relationship / an image

Expand business

Attract new customers

Retain existing customers

How Having a Personal Brand Can Help You Advance In Your Current Job

(Or Find a New One)

When you think about branding and job search, there are two things that usually come to mind: Your resume and your LinkedIn profile.

Having an online presence on LinkedIn can be important in your job search.

It should be easily understandable and easy to remember. LinkedIn Headlines can be up to 120 characters.

That’s a good target to use for your branding tagline.

The full positioning statement has an immediately clear focus supported by 3-5 main points that further emphasize that focus.

This branding statement will be used throughout your resume, profile, and the job interview process.

Your brand should be authentic, relevant, compelling, and differentiate you from others.

When someone searches for you on LinkedIn, they will see three things: Your name, your LinkedIn Headline, and your location.

In many cases, hiring managers and recruiters will make the decision to read your full profile based on just these three things.

Consequently, the LinkedIn Headline acts like a newspaper or magazine title. It gives the reader an idea of what your profile will include (just like a newspaper headline previews a story).

Being specific results in a much better headline.

Great headlines attract attention, and the more people who view your profile, the better your chances of connecting with the right person who can lead you to your dream job.

Keywords also play an important part for you in being found by people who don’t know you on LinkedIn — this is particularly true for job seekers who are hoping for contacts from prospective employers and recruiters.

Keywords are a list of words and phrases that are related to your work — they are the words that a prospective employer would search for when trying to find someone like you.

LinkedIn Headlines are searchable fields using the “People Search” function when someone is looking for particular skills, interests, qualifications, or credentials.

You can also incorporate your brand identifiers throughout your LinkedIn profile, including:

Your LinkedIn Headline

Current and former work experience

LinkedIn summary section

Specialties or Skills section

The keywords that you select for your profile must fit two criteria:

They must speak to what makes you unique and what you want to be known for.

They must align with what employers value — that is, what they want.

But don’t try to stuff too much information into the statement.

The positioning statement is “overstuffed” if you have more than one conjunction per sentence, or more than two punctuation marks (commas or semicolons).

You can learn a lot from online dating sites — because the concept is the same. You have to get someone’s attention.

Although you can create different targeted versions of your resume to target different types of positions, you’re limited to one LinkedIn profile.

Remember — your profile must speak to what makes you unique.

Be specific and single out the training, experience, and/or results that set you apart.

Someone who is reading your profile should be able to recognize YOU in it; if what you wrote could apply to anyone with your job title, go back to the drawing board.

You don’t have to come up with anything earth-shattering in your personal branding statement.

The simple point of differentiating yourself will help you be found.

A couple of key things that will help you stand out on LinkedIn:

Write your summary in the first person.

Profiles with pictures attract 50-70% more inquiries than profiles without pictures. Have a good headshot of yourself.

(Remember we talked about how branding is important in the job search and in being found on online dating sites. With that in mind, owners of dating sites say those who post photos get eight times as many contact messages as those without photos.)

At a minimum, your photo should include your head and shoulders, not just your face.

Smile! Radiate warmth and approachability in your photo.

Photos should be professionally done, if possible (but NOT Glamour Shots)

If possible, your hair and makeup should be professionally done (even if that’s by YOU — do your hair and makeup like you would if you were appearing on TV) — which is to say, a little heavier than you would on a normal day.

Wear your most complementary color.

Don’t have other people in your photos (and don’t crop other people out of your shot — there should not be any errant body parts.)

Make sure the background in the photo isn’t distracting.

Relax. Look directly at the camera.

Take multiple shots and then ask people their opinion on which one makes you seem most “approachable.”

Build Your Brand With a Custom Website

Another way to claim your brand online is through your domain name — or what’s known as a “Vanity URL” or http://www.whatever.com.

It’s a lot easier than you might think with online services such as Wix.com and WordPress.com.

Start by searching services like GoDaddy.com to find and secure your vanity URL.

Once you’ve defined your career brand, make sure it’s expressed across your career communication documents — your resume, your LinkedIn profile, and in your 10-second or 30-second introduction you respond with, “So what do you do?”